Planting the two dark red Camelai japonica 'C. M. Hovey's at the top of the drive to join the mature one and the amelanchias and form a screen between the houses turned out to be a bigger job than originally expected. It seemed to be a good time to do something about a retaining wall and more Coldstream toppings and then we had the bright idea to use some of the spotted gum logs that had been cut down in the back garden earlier this year.

Great idea - and its nice to have grown your own building materials on-site - but they are very heavy. Bringing each block down the hill and then installing in in place was absolutely exhausting!

But look at the way it turned out - very satisfying :)
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More cleaning up and mulching around the new feature sculpture delivered by Fiona from rustygardenballs.com. Now for the planting around it as soon as we're out of lockdown and can get the plants.

So, what next? At the moment, we're thinking of a combination of rhododentrons, camelias and azalias along the lines of this photoshop concept. The colours are yet to be decided and are very likely to be different to these.

It was Beth and Colin at Littlewood next door who started the project. Along the strip of garden between our driveways was a jungle of ivy and jasmine creepers draped over and mixture of dead and living cotoneasters. It's been a project that needed attention for the past 10 years but we never got around to it.
So now we're restricted by CoVID19 to what we can do and where we can go, what better than to roll up our sleeves and get into this so that its all ready for replanting next spring?

Moutains of green waste to get rid of - time to call Sam at Surburban Skips!

A year ago, I posted "The Back Garden Project is Complete" and added, "Now we wait for it to grow!" And grow it has. After a month of weekends getting the spring weeding under control and then a weekend of heavy rain, its looking very lush.

And the cabbage tree in front of the house - which makes such a mess for most of the year, and can only really be appreciated from the back garden looking over the house - is amazing at this time of year when its in full flower.

At three degrees outside, It may be the coldest start to an October day for 35 years but the sun is out, the amalanchiers and crabapples are in blossom and the azaleas and camelias are flowering. What a beautiful morning at Abbotsley!

Following the great success at Downderry and Mousehole in getting their driveways resurfaced last month, Karyn and Chris along with residents from The Barn, Devon Cottage, Wimborne and Badgers Wood decided to have their driveways re-surfaced with Coldstream toppings all on the same day thus sharing the contractor's material delivery and equipment rental costs. Abbotsley was first off the mark and the biggest job.